Wreck-It-Ralph Delta Team: Snake’s Heroes

A ninja computer virus decides to do a hostile take over of your hard drive. You have to fight back. When Jason’s A-Team tries but fails to save the day, there’s only one group who can get the job done. They’re a bunch of loose cannons, but when your back is against the wall, they’re the only hope you’ve got.

Snake’s Heroes: The Delta Team.

Following the same rules outlined in Jason’s first article, which more or less follow the laws established in Wreck-It-Ralph, I will describe each member of this team of elite video game soldiers.

Solid Snake (MGS 4)

Title: Team lead, sneaky old man

Like a fine wine, Solid Snake gets better with age. He also spoils and has a slight vinegary taste.

So this one’s sort of cheating; Solid Snake, despite his infamy for “solo” sneaking missions, never actually works alone – he has a team of individuals that back him up remotely (and in Raiden’s case, not so remotely). In fact, in order to save Snake’s ass, Sunny, a five year old girl, actually rewrote an AI that was in control of the United States. So there’s that.

It’s important to realize, however, that Snake himself is still as formidable as ever. Even as an old man, he destroyed handfuls of walking cow Metal Gears, made an immortal vampire mortal, slaughtered a bunch of freaky, sexy cyborg’s that killed legions of lesser men in seconds, and again saved the world from tyranny and chaos. He also crawled through a mile of tunnel while microwaves fried his body. Snake is hardcore. He knows how to deal with the sort of rampant AI he’ll be force to face here, and he’s a grizzled war veteran who knows how to lead a team of expert individuals. When the going gets tough, the tough get Solid Snake.

Weapons of choice

Rocket launcher, cardboard box, Raiden’s cyborg body

Ryu Hayabusa (Ninja Gaiden)

Title: Point-man, Human Armageddon

What do you do against the Hadouken?

Snake is going to need a point-man in this dangerous mission, a Tom Cruise to his Mission: Impossible. That’s where Ryu comes in. This ninja has to have one of the highest body counts in gaming history. Ninjas, demons, doesn’t matter; they just don’t f***ing get it. Ryu just killed 1,000 of you. At once. He doesn’t look tired at all. And yet you insist on running in. Maybe you’ll get lucky.

Ryu’s the biggest natural disaster to hit the Vigoor Empire in history. He’s like what everyone keeps fearing the Bird Flu outbreak will be like, except there’s a zero percent chance of survival with Ryu, and your head won’t be there anymore. But that’s also why there is no one better to have in your corner.

Ryu’s fighting prowess is second to none. The guy can walk on water, wall jump for infinity, and has powerful ninpo spells at his disposal that rip through the angels of heaven themselves (seriously). He’s blindingly fast, proficient with every type of weapon, and has been to hell and back. Plus, not being able to respawn outside of his game world isn’t a problem; Ryu has already been dead and reincarnated in canon. You can’t keep a good ninja down.

Weapons of choice

Sword, ninpo, his lust for your blood

Big Daddy (BioShock 2)

Title: The heavy lifter, Bryan Mills meets Terminator

The family outing to the Denver Aquarium goes terribly wrong.

Step one: Tell this Big Daddy that the virus kidnapped his daughter.

Step two: Watch him lay waste to everything in sight.

While fans would agree this Big Daddy got off to a slow start in BioShock 2, by the end of the game, his power is undeniable. Between his melee drill and multitude of plasmid powers, Big Daddy slaughters everything in his path on the way to his daughter. While Snake is sneaking into the heart of the virus’ base and Ryu is fighting off the huge-ass demons guarding the gates, you need someone to take out the legion of foot soldiers single-handed. This is Big Daddy’s specialty – chaos incarnate, a tornado of brute force and fire, stopping at nothing to get what he wants. He will find you, and he will put his drill through your sternum.

Weapons of choice

Melee drill, plasmids, pent-up rage

Link (Majora’s Mask)

Title: The well-rounded ringer, Hero of Time

He has a freaking double-helix sword….THAT SHOOTS LASERS. Just kill yourself now.

In every good team, there is a glue guy. This all-important member is great because he specializes in so many different things that he can effectively cover any of the teams’ deficiencies, or even fill in when need be. Solid Snake passes out from FOXDIE? Link can rely on his years of intense puzzle solving to step in and lead the group tactically. The warriors on the front line need a breather? Link can wield his deity magic, fire rod, and Master Sword to lay waste to any challengers.

While any Link would do the trick, the Hero of Time, and more specifically, the Link from Majora’s Mask, is the one I’m going with here. This Link has all the experience from Ocarina of Time already under his belt (dual timeline theory FTW), but can also wield the razor sword, and has a boatload of ability augmenting masks at his disposal to fit any circumstance. And let’s not forget this Link has sole custody of the Fierce Deity form. That alone can win just about any war ever.

Link is the time tested hero of destiny, emerging time and time again through the ages to save the world from total devastation. And, as icing on the cake, he’s a mean musician.

Weapons of choice

Master Sword, hookshot, Navi (pffff)

Secondary teams – Honorable mentions

Below are the honorable mention teams, submitted by my sister and Tech Guy. These teams are still in training, and while they have yet to take on the big mission, they demonstrate impressive potential.

Sister’s team – Relentless Assault

Riku (Kingdom Hearts 2)

Keyblade wielder and all around badass. He can fight with a blindfold, does anything for his friends, and as of Dream Drop Distance, has attained the rank of Master, something Sora himself has not yet achieved.

Sherry (Resident Evil 6)

If this choice seems odd to you, you haven’t played Resident Evil 6. If this virus has any sort of appendage resembling a head, it’s game over. This woman never does NOT get headshots.

Midna (Twilight Princess)

The best side character in all of Zelda (it sure as hell isn’t Fi), Midna can keep entire armadas at bay with her magic hair. Plus, she’s queen of an entire realm, so she knows a thing or two about leadership.

Sveta – (Golden Sun: Dark Dawn)

Characters in Golden Sun are always powerhouses, and Sveta is the brawler and healer of this impressive group. Bandaging up fellow soldiers will plan an important role in the battle against the super virus.

Tactics

This team relies on a strong front line: Riku, Sherry, and Midna attack with reckless abandon, while Sveta heals them and handles any stragglers who get past the line.

Tech guys team – Synergy

Gojeta – (Some Dragonball Z videogame)

That’s right – the most powerful being in history of any medium is front-lining tech guys team. Can’t really fault him, either. Sure, the brief amount of time Gogeta, the fusion between Goku and Vegeta, can actually stay fused together is limited…but how much time does it take for this guy to decimate pretty much anything? If you’re going to tell me that the virus is a bunch of Kid Buus or something…then we’re all in trouble.

Dr. Robotnic – (Sonic The Hedgehog 2)

Robotnic is evil, but he’s smart enough to know that if this virus wins, everyone loses. He begrudgingly serves as the tech guy (!) on this team, a sort of Q figure that equips the others with gadgets and gear to augment their abilities in combat. Additionally, his army of kittens-turned-robots, while sad, is a force in and of itself.

Link (Four Swords Adventures)

While Link is always a good choice and can hold his own in combat or tackle whatever the virus throws at him, this one is particularly devastating in this team. Find out why below…

Sora (Kingdom Hearts 2)

He who killed a thousand heartless. In one five minute fight. By himself.

Tactics

Tech guy’s team relies heavily on team work and synchronicity between members, to highlight and complement their strengths. The good doctor constructs weapons and gear to help the team, and can adapt to any situation; the problem in Sonic was he invented AND tried to use the inventions. A good director is rarely also a good actor.

However, the linchpin of the team is Link, and more specifically, his Four Sword.

Links gives the sword to Robotnic: the inventions and problem solving capacity are multiplied by 4.

Links gives the sword to Sora: so much death and devastation awaits this virus. And good spirited naivete.

Link gives the sword to Gogeta: yeah…and let’s not forget that, when the four Gogetas revert back to Goku and Vegeta, that’s actually eight fighters now swarming the field. The virus is done. And probably so are all of your electronics. It’s almost too much power, but it’s better to take it all down then let the virus have it. Right?

With Halloween coming up, I figured it would be an appropriate time to chronicle the scariest experiences I have ever had with gaming. The horror genre has had a significant impact on the realm of gaming, and here's hoping developers continue to find new ways to scare the sh*t out of us.

(Note: While I originally had the Silent Hill series on the list, I decided I did not play through enough of the games to be any kind of authority on them. I recognize even in my limited time with them that they are frightening and especially twisted, but couldn't include them without full playthroughs. Chalk it up to stupid integrity or a cop out on my part, but just be aware why I didn't include it on the list. Enjoy!)

5. BioShock--Heralded as a modern classic, BioShock’s horror elements are often overlooked, which is a terrible oversight. The underwater city already has an environment that is both hopeless and eerily desolate, but this is only the beginning. Lights will cut to black, flickering on again to reveal a disfigured maniac standing completely still right behind you. Blood soaks the walls of medical wards, where genetic experiments went horribly wrong. Even f*cking ghosts show up to haunt the city. Bioshock succeeds where other games fail because the entire world is crafted with a common theme of a fallen utopia, and oozes with a chilling ambiance and sense of constant dread, like the fragile walls could collapse at any moment.

Furthermore, every character, from the idealistic Andrew Ryan to the mentally deranged artist Sander Cohen, has questionable motivations and dark intentions, creating a narrative just as tense as the gameplay. BioShock immerses the player fully in its environment and atmosphere, and this is what it allows it to achieve this level of constant anxiety.

A fine example of the justice system in Rapture.

4. Dead Space--I know Dead Space just copies different horror movies and possesses very little in the originality department. However, while it does emulate different tried and true horror elements, it does it exceedingly well, and that’s okay by me. I guess the game isn’t “scary” so much as it is “startling,” but with weird creatures coming out of the woodwork of the infested spaceship and popping up when you think they were already dead, things get intense pretty quickly. Factor in the constant struggle with ammunition, and you literally spend your time crawling through tunnels, terrified the next corner is going to throw some monstrosity at you that you have no means to deal with.

Another aspect that ramps up the horror is the fact the protagonist is not a secret Government agent (Resident Evil 4) or some guy hopped up steroids (Resident Evil 5); he is a lowly engineer, trying to mind his own business and collect a paycheck by doing engineer stuff. This lends the title signicantly more intensity, because you don’t have a formidable protagonist with combat training and a witty attitude to save the day. Isaac is as insecure and unable to stop these monstrosities as you and I would be in real life. And since I would get my face eaten off almost immediately, it makes the entire game a little uncomfortable. Combine this with the gritty visuals and unsettling violence, and you have a complete horror package that is as close to Alien as gaming has ever come.

ew.

3. Left 4 Dead—If the inevitable zombie apocalypse involves stiff, slow-moving, reanimated corpses, I think I could probably survive. You know, stay out of closed off areas. Hoard food and guns. Generally don’t do stupid things. “Oh you got bit? That’s cool. You just relax right here next to me. We'll give you the comfy chair, and then turn out backs to you for the next few hours. Stay comfortable.” It just seems like an easy situation to not die in.

L4D has taught me an important lesson. If the zombies are anything like they are in this game, then we have a problem. These are not slow moving, moaning corpses. The zombies--wait, I’m sorry, the “infected”—in Left 4 Dead not only greatly outnumber you, but run faster than you do, too. Worse yet, they have special infected that range from zombies that leap great distances to chew on your throat, or use their unnaturally long tongues to wrap you up and drag you to them. Where they proceed to chew on your throat. In this case, I just don’t think my chances of surviving are high, especially since I would just shoot myself in the face if I heard a Tank barreling towards me. I don’t handle anxiety situations well. Between the constant threat of the special infected to the terrifying swarms of speedy undead, Left 4 Dead throws the player into some frenetic scenarios that leave your knuckles white and forehead sweaty. Well, at least they did for me. Like I said, I don't handle anxiety well.

And that's why I would just kill myself.

2. Resident Evil 4--While some games are content to play mind games or create a creepy atmosphere, other games instill fear by simply ramping up the intensity. Cue Resident Evil 4. What the fourth iteration of this iconic series lacks in classic scares, it makes up for with some of the most visceral action sequences in gaming. The title places the main character in the middle of a village where blood thirsty, zombified villagers attack in mobs, flank your character, and break through windows, all for the general purpose of impaling Leon with hatchets or whatever other farm tools are lying around. Then, just when you think you’ve caught a breather, some guy with a bag over his head comes at you with a chainsaw. If you manage to take down the chainsaw guys without getting your head lopped off (which the game shows in gruesome detail), the game provides you blind lunatics with huge claws that respond to your every sound and charge at you to lop of your head. The protagonist’s struggle to keep his head is so intense that I would actually find myself relieved at times when he would get killed, thankful for the moment of reprieve. I would say that this white knuckled gameplay does not relent until the very ending, but the conclusion of the game finds Leon escaping the village on a jet ski. And doing stunts on said jet ski. Other than this unfortunate mishap, Resident Evil 4 is not only the most intense game on the Gamecube, but one of the most terrifying games of all time.

(insert close shaving joke here)

1. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’sRequiem-ET takes the top spot because it is just plain mean to the player. The game incorporates a sanity meter as its principal gameplay mechanic, and when the meter drops, all hell breaks loose. A woman screaming in a blood-filled bathtub flashes across the screen. Blood slowly begins to drip down the walls. The room will turn upside down. Your character will begin to shed bodyparts. Your protagonist’s head will randomly explode. After pausing the game, your inventory appears gone. Flies will crawl across the screen. The channel will change. The volume will spike. The list goes on and on. The aural effects contribute to the terrifying environment as well, as eerie whispers, screams in the distance, and random moans of pain all make you feel like your character is truly losing grips with their sanity.

The mind games are only the beginning. Horrific creatures that kill most of the protagonists in terrible ways frequent each level. That’s right, ET doesn’t settle for trying to scare the player despite the main character staying safe; less than half of the main cast survives until the end of the game. ET does not mess around, and kills off more main characters than 24.

While there is a lot of scary happenings in ET, there is one trick specifically that puts the title at the top spot. When the sanity meter is low and the player tries to save the game, occasionally a message will inform the player that the game is erasing their file. It’s a trick, of course, but it’s still pretty horrific. It was decidedly less amusing when I thought it was real the first time and jumped up to turn off the game, losing all the data in the process…but terrifying nonetheless. For the combination of horrifying monsters and trippy mind tricks, Eternal Darkness is my scariest game of all time.

Poor quality, but it was the scariest image of the game I could find.

Now go back through, and every time you read ET, pretend it means the friendly alien instead of Eternal Darkness. Alternatively, you could try Entertainment Tonight. That should provide about 15 seconds of enjoyment.

So often, people only want to talk about the “best of the best,” and gaming is no exception. Every online corner you turn, there is someone discussing the artistic merit of BioShock, or the top 10 most influential titles in the new decade. It gets to the point where journalists and bloggers seem more like biased cheerleaders blindly promoting the industry. Well, I am not content to be a blind cheerleader. This week, instead of outlining the games that will change the world or some similar nonsense, I decided to talk about the stains on the industry, the outrageously bad titles that make the rest of the gaming medium look like Shakespeare. These games aren’t just bad, they are a special kind of bad reserved only for the deepest circles of hell. So you were warned. I was going to describe the top five, but the top four elicited almost 2000 words of hatred out of me, so I decided to leave it at that.

4.Bomberman: Act Zero–“This game is a supposed prequel to the series. Bombermen are being built and must prove to be good enough by destroying each other. Whoever comes out alive wins.” No, that introduction is not a joke; I stole it straight from the Wikipedia page, where someone who takes the game seriously enough to write about it was trying to summarize the plot. Act Zero is so bad that people think you are making silly jokes when you describe its premise.

Well said.

I can think of a lot of things that could improve the Bomberman series. Adding a depressing, ultra serious storyline is not one of them. Replacing the lovable, colorful cartoon characters with hate-inspiring, lifeless robots is not either. And it really doesn’t help that the characters are about as responsive as a broken-down Sherman tank, which is an unfortunate trait to have when your name is “Bomberman” and you deal with explosives on a regular basis. I was never excited for this game, but rarely do I get angry at the thought of one. Bomberman: Act Zero makes me angry.

3.Custer’s Revenge–Games have a long history of practicing cultural awareness. Remember Cole’s blatantly racist slang and stereotypical accent in Gears of War? You think that cultural insightfulness came from nowhere? It all started with Custer’s Revenge, a game where the only goal is to rape a Native American woman tied to what appears to be a cactus. How is this okay, in any context, ever? If I had a time machine, I would travel back 20 years so I could witness the class act who, at a corporate meeting or whatever, pitched this idea as a legitimate game. Then I want to put him in a cage with the people who agreed with the idea, and then…put a bunch of bears in the cage, or something. I could talk about gameplay, which involved dodging arrows from the sky, but why waste your time? Were you hoping that the gameplay that lead you to rape was good? Well, it’s not. The game was intended as a sexual fantasy. If the thought of crudely animated characters having sex on a cactus arouses you, I’m pretty sure there’s an empty prison cell with your name on it. And come on, man! That’s like having sexual fantasies about Lego characters doing it. Not cool.

This game doesn't deserve a picture. Instead, here's a cat playing Jenga. And losing.

2. Superman 64–Imagine, for a moment, that you could create a superhero. Now pretend that you wanted to make the worst superhero ever. What would his pantheon of powers be? What would his villains gallery consist of? Chances are that no matter how terrible you’ve imagined your hero, Superman 64 has eclipsed it.

In this game, you guide Superman, the most powerful and broken superhero ever, through a series of endless hoops which have been shrouded in a green mist. Once in awhile, you will be tasked with performing some mindless and inane task, like pulling two cars off a street. Then it’s back to flying to rings. That’s the whole game. That’s it. Your main antagonists? Rings suspended in the air. Your primary superpower? Barely controllable flight. I don’t understand. You have a Superman license, which was probably not an easy thing to procure, and then you waste it by having the Man of Steel fly through hoops in the air for hours with the responsiveness of a torn kite being guided by an inebriated four year old. I didn’t follow the story because it made me want to vomit everywhere, but I’m guessing the Kryptonite mist is a shortcut to explaining why Superman’s other powers have taken a hiatus. Again, why bother with the license? That’s like saying “Hey, I have a really good superhero game idea. Let’s take Wolverine, but instead of an adamantium skeleton and claws, he’s a normal dude who works as an IRS agent. Get it? The people who dodge their taxes are the bad guys.” I apologize for my ranting, but…wait, no I don’t. Superman 64 is not only one of the worst games ever conceived, but also the worst superhero licensed title of all time.

Poor Smeagol

1. E.T. – By tapping into my limited programming knowledge, I could think of a bunch of different ideas for an E.T. game. Flying on bicycles, for example, could be entertaining, and feasible on the NES. How about a game where the entire objective is escaping with E.T. from that lab thing at the end of the film? Sounds like fun. Hell, how about a title where you release frogs from jars in a school?

Apparently, the developers of E.T. had a better idea; instead of including gameplay that is even remotely similar to the events that transpired in the film, E.T. the game focuses on navigating a clump of blocks that if you look really hard sort of resembles E.T. through a series of pits. Where was a desert full of pits in the film? Is this like some sort of prequel or something? If there was a piece of a phone in the pit, score…I guess (why is the phone in pieces, and why are the pieces at the bottom of these pits. This doesn’t sound like a prequel at all). If the pit was empty like the souls of the people that created this travesty, which was the case 99% of the time, then the crux of E.T.’s “gameplay” began.

In order to get out of the pit, the player needed to stretch E.T’s neck until he started to slowly float upwards. This process lasted, like, forever, and is as conducive to making you cry bloody tears as it sounds. Once E.T. reaches the top, the player has a split second to retract the head, or E. T. falls back down into the same pit. That’s the entire game. To put this in better perspective, if you began stretching E.T’s head when you first started reading this article, then by the time you are finished reading it, wait six more hours, then retract the head at the exact correct moment or fail. Sounds like fun, right? No. It sounds like something I would give to the person who killed my family as a tool of revenge.

To be fair, the designer of the game only had six weeks to complete it, due to the…no, you know what? No excuses. This game is just the worst idea ever, and I wish whoever thought it up immense dishonor. Dishonor on him and his family and anyone else that was in any way related to this game. Dishonor.

Yes, I’m aware that everyone and their mother have voiced their opinions on the artistic merit of the video game industry, but I figure I may as well give my two cents on the topic. I’m a frequent victim of peer pressure, so I figure this would only be acting within character.

Videogames have grown up. Once a niche technology focused on high scores and competition and defined solely by its gameplay, the medium has evolved into a thematic vehicle that utilizes storytelling, audio and visual ambiance. Games now provide their audiences with a truly unique form of media by blending storytelling with interactivity.

Despite this growth and progression, the true nature of games is still fervently debated.

The biggest debate regarding this issue is whether games can be considered a “higher art.” Even Roger Ebert, renowned film critic, has voiced his opinion on this topic, stating that although games can sometimes possess aesthetically pleasing qualities, videogames, by definition, cannot be art (he has since redefined his stance in what can only be described as a sort of backhanded apology).

Gaming's artistic equivalent, according to some.

Ebert believes that art must be composed by an artist and experienced in an unaltered form by the audience. When an individual reads a book, watches a movie, or admires a painting, they are experiencing art in its basic form, the way the artist intended. The problem, he explains, is no matter which game one plays, the experience is going to be in some way different than every other person that has played the game, because the audience’s choice affects the experience. No matter what game it is, or how linear the design, the fact that a player inputs controls that directly affects the outcome of the title nullifies its merit as a work of art.

According to this definition and obeying these semantics, videogames certainly cannot be considered art; however, doesn’t concretely classifying what can and cannot be art go against the essence of art itself? Defining what comprises art is much like trying to explain a color to someone who is blind. Art is a unique experience that affects people in very different ways and means something different to each person who experiences it.

Obviously, not every example of interactive entertainment can qualify for this artistic ambition. Many games are content to pander to the masses, delivering basic experiences that do little to stimulate the audience outside of their twitch reflexes. However, anyone who has explored the Ayn Rand-inspired dystopia of BioShock, or has witnessed the seamless fusion of beauty and gameplay in Shadow of the Colossus would have a difficult time arguing that these experiences were any less instances of art than those of other, more permanently constructed mediums.

Truthfully, this debate will likely never be settled, nor should it be. It is up to the audience to interpret their videogame experience, and determine for themselves how moved they were by what they have witnessed. Getting caught up with whether or not games satisfy intellectual’s art criteria is beside the point.

After all, art is more important for what it achieves than how it exists in and of itself. Literature is essentially just words on a page; it is the audience’s interaction with these words that gives the writing relevance, the reflection upon the reader’s mind that gives it substance. Similarly, until a painting resonates with one’s own internal feelings and thoughts, it is just a picture. It is the sentimental connection that allows the picture to transcend into art.

He's just misunderstood.

A game does not achieve art simply by existing; it is not until the audience interacts with the game, and experiences the thoughts and feelings that are evoked by it, that the game can even possibly be considered an artistic endeavor. My point is that, ultimately, perception is what defines art, not words, and certainly not one man’s attempt at a universal interpretation. The experience derived from games is what is important, whether the game fits the definition of art or not.